


faith/hope/ruin

by Kicker



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Corpses, Death, Eating Disorders, Gen, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nuclear Warfare, Swearing, obvs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:16:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: a series (?) of vignettes of Commonwealth life and/or lives, featuring mostly unnamed settlers/ghouls/raiders.





	1. staring at the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I opened up my text editor to write one thing and found a completely different fragment I’d totally forgotten about. it caught my attention and turned into this. the original fragment was inspired by [Staring at the Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uo2WLQ2LVA) by TV on the Radio, so maybe listen to that before/while you read this.
> 
> narrator is a nameless ghoul who’s probably about seventeen (give or take a couple of hundred years), doesn’t take part of any existing stories of mine but probably lives on the edges of all of them. the mall doesn’t exist as a location in the game, either, but if it did it’d probably be somewhere near Quincy.
> 
> originally posted here: [staring at the sun](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/post/159732601070/staring-at-the-sun)

the shutters came down soon after the first blast. it was an automated system, top of the line according to the advertising materials we found in a back room. it told us all about how bullet-proof, bomb-proof, and radiation-proof the shutter system was, how the sensors would react automatically to DefCon levels and actively work to ‘guard American values’. 'this system is guaranteed to protect your customers against the strongest Chinese bombs’, it said. 'get this and keep the Communists’ dirty hands off your merchandise’.

none of it would do a damn bit of good without the optional radiation scrubber on the aircon, but they probably didn’t take the time to read the small print.

time? we had plenty of that.

-

there were only a few dozen of us to start with. it wasn’t the most popular mall despite the claims on the posters around town, or the increasingly garish and obviously cheap adverts they kept placing in the Bugle. but that suited us, me and my friends. when the bombs fell we were doing the usual Saturday morning routine, which was strolling around passing snap judgement on the products and pouring scorn on the idiots that would buy them.

sure, we were assholes, but it was fun. and I was relishing my last days of freedom. I was about to be put on disciplinary at school for refusing to eat any of that pink crap they were shoving at us. I’d managed to hide it for a really long time, I was… pretty good at hiding that sort of thing by that point. but someone had noticed and ratted me out, and it was only a matter of time before I was super-grounded. no more judging, no more scorning. pink goo for every meal.

(I went back to the school once, just to see. and I half-wanted to grab my stuff from my locker even though I knew it’d all have been vaporized. I didn’t get anywhere near the place. they were there, lying all around, people I used to know. I mean, you never really _know_ the kids who aren’t in your year, in your classes even. but you still don’t want to see their bloated, fluorescent corpses floating in stagnant water.)

-

we couldn’t find a ‘release the shutters’ button and none of us really wanted to go outside, what with the explosions and so on. so, we made a home for ourselves. I had a spot over by a side escalator, huddled with my friends between that and a few giant pots filled with plastic plants that seemed to _glow_ green, greener than any real plant I’d ever seen. it was our little jungle hideaway, our very own 'can you survive the wilds?’ TV series.

on those shows they say society tends to chaos, that given almost any difficult circumstances, humans will fall into tribal behavior and beat each other over the head with clubs, exploit each others’ weaknesses in order to gain power. we didn’t. there was a whole lot of gunfire outside for a whole lot of time, and if there was one thing we could agree on, it was that we had to survive to stick it to the Commies.

to be fair one of the guys did go absolutely batshit crazy in days, disappeared off. we never saw him again, never even found a body. maybe he found his way out; maybe he was the one that took the fusion core that powered the shutters, left us trapped in there. I don’t know. the rest of us sort of… shrugged and made do. we had supplies to last us months and someone had to come find us, when America had won the war.

right?

-

'she was sick already,’ we’d say. 'he was really old, right? without a doctor, this is only to be expected.’

then I woke up one day with a dead body by my side. my best friend. two months younger than me and one day just… gone. her mouth open wide, eyes rolled back in her head, her hand so stiff and cold in mine.

we still didn’t admit to ourselves what was happening.

the bodies started to decompose faster than we thought they would. we tried to drag them away from where we were 'living’ but the smell was still incredible. I mean, it was bearable so long as all the doors stayed closed… but people have to move, you know, and when they did? oh, _god_. even the faintest movement of air seemed to spread and multiply the stench until we all seemed to be constantly holding in the retching.

or maybe that was the radiation.

whatever it was, it got to be too much. we found a spot where someone had driven right into the side of the building; those fucking bomb-proof shutters were fine, of course, but the metal panelling of the walls had been damaged. the combined action of the winter’s storms and the salty air of the coast had begun to peel it away from the layers of insulation.

we had the biggest argument that we’d had since the shutters came down. who was going to go out? should we go out? shouldn’t we patch it up? what were we even going to do out there? wasn’t it inviting the Communists to come in and take all our stuff?

I volunteered to go scout things out. I was small, and light, and disposable.

everyone agreed.

-

outside, the air seemed clean. the gunfire… well, there was plenty of it, but it seemed to come from far enough away that it wasn’t an immediate concern. the truck was huge, jackknifed across the road with its load tipped and shed in such a way as to camouflage the tiny exit hole we’d made.

we dragged the bodies out, painstakingly, those of us who were still strong enough to do so. we didn’t really know what to do with them, so we just dropped them in the sea, off the edge of the half-destroyed pier rather than just dumping them on the beach. we tried to time it with what we knew of the tides, and prayed for a bout of bad weather to wash them away. some of them it did. some of them it brought back, with tooth-marks and limbs missing, alongside pieces of unidentifiable creatures and… _things_ caught together in the flotsam.

we tried not to think about it. the insects were larger, already, and the fish were… the fish were fucked up. but they were nowhere near our safe little space. they weren’t our problem. if we blocked up the hole in between our makeshift burials-at-sea, neither they nor the radiation would get in.

-

three months in, I pulled off my shoes and stepped into the sea with my bare, blistered feet. the water stung, as though it were more full of salt than it had been before. but the air hurt by that point, too, the gentlest breeze enough to send a thrill of pain through my raw and tender skin.

so I stepped in further. the cold took over from that initial sting, sinking right to my bones. even in summer my younger self might perhaps have squealed, running from the waves before someone thought to splash me. but now, iron-cold as it was, it soothed my pain, numbed it, and balancing myself against the insistent tug of water around my ankles helped me forget for a moment.

I stared out over the sea, the sun of a late January afternoon burning painfully into eyes that were always sore, and wondered how it was over _there_. I thought back, tried to remember what was on the other side. was it Europe? or was it Africa? the memories of globes and maps were hazy and I wasn’t sure if it was the aching hunger that dogged me, that _sustained_ me through those classes or something worse.

I couldn’t help but wonder; had they gone through the same as us? was there another seventeen-year-old on another shore, with her feet in the surf? was she like me, or was she in her bathing suit, thinking sadly about the lost continent of America before she returned to her ice creams, to her family, to her life?

-

they say that there are humans, healthy humans, who seek out the power of something they call ‘Atom’ and wish ghoul… ghouldom… ghoulification, whatever the fuck you want to call it on themselves. they abase themselves in front of nuclear waste, in the Glowing Sea itself, call down ~His Judgement~ upon themselves as though it’s some kind of blessing. it’s not. it’s not some god-given gift, or Atom-given, or whatever. this is a nightmare that only goes on longer the more we try to stop it.

but, realistically, that’s what I was doing with my solitary trips to the beach. I was trying to hasten the change I already knew was going to happen. we’d all realized it, in truth. after the first feral attack we slowly stopped hiding the patches of mottled skin, took off hats that we’d convinced other people we liked or were wearing because they were trashy and amusing, _god_ , who in their right minds would _ever_ have worn this.

and I wasn’t the only one to take those brief moments on the shore. some of us - the few that were left - disappeared altogether. I did think, more than once, that perhaps I could walk right out into the sea, let the water close over my head, let it take me once and for all. but something always brought me back. fear, maybe, fear of the unknown. certainly not a lust for life, a desire to keep on living with this unfinished body that’s already been wrecked by forces beyond my control.

-

I don’t know if my mind will last. perhaps I’ll end up like one of these ferals, a withered husk drawn only by sound and the stench of rotting flesh. I can only hope that someone finds me before I do too much damage, and gives me the end I can’t seem to give myself.


	2. autumn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another quick (well. ish.) Commonwealth vignette, spawned from Bombay Bicycle Club’s [Autumn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYaagygbH_U) which showed up on a playlist earlier and hit me like a ton of bricks.
> 
> narrator is sort of a… Kellogg-lite. he’s an unwilling mercenary and a bit of a cad, but kind of hates himself for it. it’s Starlight because that always ends up being my most-developed settlement, and I guess it must be after the Sole Survivor has founded it and moved on to more exciting tasks with more explosions.
> 
> originally posted here: [autumn](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/post/159768332100/autumn)

I’m not a raider. I’m not really a mercenary, either. I’m just a guy trying to get along, make an honest living in this place we call a home. it’s a tough life on the road but… you know. we all gotta do what we gotta do to survive.

_don’t you want to settle down_ , they ask, a faint tremor of hope in their voice.

_maybe one day_ , you reply. _you know. with the right girl._

it’s the soulful approach, and they fall for it every time. sweet brown eyes melt like warm chocolate, baby-blues glisten like dew-covered hubflowers. it’s the grey-eyed ones you got to watch out for. they’re smart. they know not to take you at your word. bright as silver, hard as steel, those eyes’ll bore into you and lay you bare.

or maybe that was just hers.

-

I left home, if you could call it that, at the age of sixteen. it’s the traditional Commonwealth ritual, your pa sitting you down and giving the _you’re a man now, son, it’s about time you took some responsibility for the family business, earn your keep_ speech.

the kid never wants it, of course. the farmer kid wants to become a raider and the raider kid wants to become a farmer. both of them do something stupid so mom’ll grab them by the ear and tell ‘em what’s what, set them back on the path to the life they never wanted and will resent until the day they die.

I didn’t have a mom to stop me.

I ended up on the road, alone. I really wasn’t a mercenary; I did odd jobs, helped people out. I only killed when I had to, when they attacked me first, when I thought it was the right thing to do.

then one day I _really_ needed the caps.

now here I am.

-

pa was a mercenary through and through. he killed people for caps and he didn’t care whether they deserved it or not. _it’s just a contract, son. the contractors make the decision. the guilt and responsibility’s on them. you have to remember that._

I don’t know what stroke of dumbfuck luck ended up with me trailing after him. I don’t remember how it happened, it just… always was. that’s how things were. he never spoke of a mom, or ma, or whatever. it was him and me, on the road.

he never beat me or any shit like that; I was more useful to him if I at least kinda wanted to be there. I was really good at getting blood out of threadbare shirts without making them even more threadbare, I guess. besides, a kid’s a good decoy, great cover if you’re scouting out a good spot for a killshot. a kid’s a good honeypot, too, and the younger the better so they don’t understand what’s going on in the other room.

_oh, but he’s so adorable. it’s so lovely that you take such good care of him, and on your own. you’re such a good father._

_it’s tough_ , he’d say. _but I do what I got to do to bring my boy up right._

the soulful approach.

the apple never falls far from the tree.

-

I told myself I wouldn’t be like him, I’d wait for the right girl and make an honest woman of her. but it turns out it’s much easier to persuade a person to let a warm body share their bedroll than to part with their caps so you can rent a room of your own.

I told myself they knew the game, that they were using me as much as I was using them. why pay someone to chop a few bits of wood for the fire when you can flutter your eyelashes and get them to warm you themselves?

I told myself I came back to Starlight over and again because it was convenient, that it was central, that I could resupply anything I needed from the stalls. that I only ever went to one of them was just a sign of how good she was as a trader.

I told myself that that bright smile lit up her face when she saw me because she did that to everyone for a few extra caps. Commonwealth entrepreneurship, hardly any different from the honeyed words I used to spare me a night in a radroach-infested dosshouse.

I also told myself that I earned that spot in her bed by my charm and wit alone, and that I was the only one to be afforded that privilege.

I told myself a lot of things.

-

every time I went back the creases around her eyes were deeper, and it took more of my fake little platitudes to bring that smile to her face. it came, sure, and not to put too fine a point on it so did we. but we started off wrong, or carried on wrong, or were the wrong people to start with.

we were good at talking, we just never seemed to do it at the right time. the accidental _I love yous_ came out when she was asleep, or pretending to be. the _do you have to gos_ when I was already half-way out the door.

part of me could see a different life, with her, with two bright-eyed kids being brought up in the safety of Starlight. but if I thought too long about it, I started to feel like I was suffocating. walls pressing in, some kid looking up at me needing so much more than I was ever gonna be able to give. what the fuck would I do if something happened to her? I was even less use than my pa, I could barely stay sober even when I was with her.

no, that life was all in my head. just turning back wouldn’t make it happen, either. even if I made that choice it would take work, years of work, to turn my entire life around for her.

so instead I looked over my shoulder, showed her half my face so she couldn’t see the whole hurt.

_how will you miss me if I never leave?_

-

it was autumn when I went back for the last time. her house had a different chair out front, and a pile of broken crockery she’d never have left lying around like that. so I knew something was wrong, even before I got to her stall. it was being run by a different person, some asshole with one eye and a faceful of radburns. I bought some shit I didn’t need just to buy some time, get my words together enough to ask about her. I feared the worst, a pile of heaped earth outside the settlement, indistinguishable from all the others.

somehow, it managed to be worse than that.

_yeah, she got knocked up a few months back_ , he said. _went over to live in a new place, down by the coast. Kings… Kingsport? rather them than me, fuckin’ mirelurks everywhere round that way._

**them**.

I stood there for a moment, thinking of all those words I’d tried to say, or that I had said but at exactly the wrong time. I wanted to fix it. Kingsport’s not so far from Starlight, I could go over there, tell her, promise her I could make things right if she’d give me a chance.

a fantasy. a fucking stupid one, at that.

so I did the only constructive thing I was ever able to do reliably, the one thing I could really do to a high degree of proficiency.

I got blackout drunk.

-

I woke up in a heap by the dumpsters out back of the drive-in screen. my pack was gone, my gun was gone, even my pockets had been stripped of caps. going by the size of the crowd of muties crashing through my head there were probably slim pickings to be had after I’d had my fill of booze. joke’s on them, huh. all I had left was the knife in my boot; even your average Commonwealth scavenger knows to keep away from a man’s feet if he’s fresh off the road.

I dragged myself up, found my way to a pisser to sort myself the fuck out. broken mirror on the wall showed me some asshole with dried blood covering half his face like raider warpaint, the skin under it swollen and misshapen like some shitty-ass holiday mask. _hi,_ I said, _I’m the elephant man, got some candy?_

I never felt as alone as I did that moment.

I was struck by another flash of fantasy, having her cradle me in her arms as she mopped the blood from my face, making me promise to never do it again, that I’d stay home and look after her like I was supposed to.

I’d have promised. I’d have meant it too.

I’d still have failed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @gaeadene suggested Geneva (McDonough’s secretary) for a vignette. 
> 
> Geneva has 68 voiced lines in the game, including variations for Sole’s gender and the various dialogue options. so… that’s pretty much a free reign. to me, she fits into the ‘threatening woman’ trope of noir ladies: she’s not a good woman because she accepts bribes, she’s not a femme fatale because she doesn’t know what McDonough’s up to and does seem to have the city’s best interests at heart, but people mistrust her anyway because of how she presents herself.
> 
> (also in those noir terms I see McDonough and her as a sort of parallel to Valentine and Ellie; the good-guy cop and his good-woman secretary versus the corrupt politician and his secretary who turns a blind eye to his misdoings as long as the city keeps on running. that’s mostly irrelevant but kind of an insight into why this came out the way it did)
> 
> song is Sons and Daughters, [Gilt Complex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvGxzg7-GQo).
> 
> originally posted [here](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/post/159954019650/gilt-complex)

I know what they say about me. down in the city, up in the stands, they say exactly the same thing. I’m only here because of what I do for the Mayor. what I _do_ , you understand, that very particular definition of the word.

what I _do_ is work every hour God sends. what I _do_ is keep this city from falling apart. what I _do_ is make sure they don’t have to worry about a damn thing beyond where they’re going to sit in order to spread their nasty little rumors.

they worry so much about me but what do _they_ do? they did nothing to earn their places. they had their cushy lifestyles handed to them on a plate. they had parents that were worth something, that thought about more of a future than the next bottle of moonshine. some of us had to work to get where we are today.

and just look at me now.

-

there wasn’t a particular moment I realized my pa was worthless. I always knew. everyone knew. some of the other families tried to help us out but pa always put a stop to it as soon as he found out. too proud to accept help. too stupid to know he really needed it.

my brother looked after me for a long time, but it couldn’t last. he grew up, faster than I did, so before we knew it he was just another busybody getting in the way of pa’s drinking, taking up space in the house that could be used for whatever worthless junk he was collecting that week.

so he went off, joined the Minutemen. _he’s never going to teach me to protect us_ , he said. _I’ll learn some stuff. earn some caps. I’ll come back for you. maybe find you a husband while I’m at it._

that was thirty years ago.

-

there was an advertising hoarding just outside our little corner of the Commonwealth. I don’t even know what she was supposed to be selling, that part of the sign had been blasted away by a bomb or the weather or just time. all that was left was a woman, sat behind a desk with a smart little typewriter, and a single phrase.

_invest in the best._

I used to sit and stare up at it, every morning, in the quiet before pa woke up. _invest in the best_ , before I was sent out to pick up the day’s moonshine and the cheapest food or supplies. _invest in the best_ before I got smacked round the ear for suggesting a better option.

so that’s what I did, when I started to make my own way. any time I had to spend my caps I always thought twice. with a bit of duct tape those shoes will do for another winter. if I keep that blouse clean it’ll last longer. I always made do and saved until I could buy the best thing I could buy, the toughest thing, the one that’d last the longest so I could save even more for the next one.

people don’t understand that. they don’t know you’re sleeping on a threadbare bedroll or how many days that pot of stew’s been going with just an extra tato or two thrown in. all they see is the pile of caps that one time you head down the market. all they see is a blouse brighter than their own, a hairstyle that keeps itself neat for a little bit longer than theirs.

they call it avarice, or so I hear. is it? how can it be avarice? I know what it’s like to have nothing. I don’t want to go back there.

-

I didn’t know what was going on. I made it my business not to. I’d made my way from the ground to the skies, after all, the entire city got to see me go to work in the morning on that rickety old elevator. I sat proudly in my windswept office like I hadn’t even noticed the windows were all gone. and I was damned if I was going to let it be taken from me by rumor-mongers or troublemakers. I was higher, I was better, I had _won_.

_look at me now_ , I thought, as I looked down on the Upper Stands. _you thought you were so superior up there. that you could look down on everyone below you, just because of where you sat._

well, look at me now.

just look at me.

-

when I heard the shouting I thought it was that reporter, snooping around and causing trouble again. never seemed to matter how carefully I tried to keep them apart, they’d always end up in some shouting match somewhere or other. best to let it happen, pick up the pieces, and try to learn how to stop it the next time. but she always came back, and it always happened again.

maybe she never had to learn that lesson the way I did.

I thought that with the Institute gone, she’d stop with her little crusade. so I was annoyed, more than anything, when I pulled open the door. and I was even less ready for what came through it.

the sound of two gunshots.  _bang bang._

Danny reeled out backwards like he was hooked by a supermutant. McDonough followed him out and I thought - like the blind fool I am - that he was trying to help. he shoved him on the elevator, after all. but the kid had two bullets in his stomach, couldn’t catch himself, went right over the edge.

I wonder if he’s alright. I hope he’s alright. he’s a good kid, he doesn’t deserve this.

if he’s not…well. I just hope it was over fast.

-

we both flinch when the noise starts, the hammering on the door, the crashes of someone throwing themselves against it. it holds; of course it holds. I made sure the security was locked down tight. nobody knows about the button under the desk, not even him.

so now there’s a scratching, scrabbling noise coming from that door. sounds like there’s a radroach scuttling around right inside the brickwork but we both know what it really is. it starts, stops. starts, stops. every time, his grip tightens and he holds me closer against him, his stomach hot against my back, his sweat and mine mingling through the fabric of our shirts.

I can hear, I can _feel_ his finger on the trigger, feel the tension loading in the springs, the glide of metal on oiled metal. and that sour smell of his curls around me like it has fingers of its own.

I swore I’d never let him touch me, that I’d make my way on merit alone, that I’d never let my future be decided with me on my knees.

and this is where I am anyway.

-

what happens next depends on who comes through that door. Diamond City Security? I can kiss my brains goodbye. they’ve gone along with his word, _my_ word for so long they’ll probably think the whole thing is staged. they’ve had the poison poured in their ears, _drip drip drip_ , every damn day. and if Danny’s gone… they’re not going to hold back.

Piper? she’d shoot me if she thought she’d get him too.

who else is there? who’s going to come for little old me?

nobody.


	4. iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit of a cheat because it isn’t the Commonwealth and the protagonist does in fact have a name.
> 
> it’s the story of the first death of John ‘Charmer’ Roscoe, many years prior to his arrival in the Commonwealth. but it could be the story of any of the lives lost in the resource wars or the many battles during and after the final near-obliteration of humanity. just change his nationality and that of the bastards who sent him out there to die.
> 
> as with the others in the series, it was inspired by a song: Woodkid’s [Iron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkb0kDacjs).
> 
> nb 1: this is the narrative of a man who’s about to die. in a war. so, it ain’t too cheerful. 
> 
> nb 2: Charmer is from London so bear that in mind when reading this narrative. think… slow, measured, quite flat in tone. front of the mouth, lips not moving too much when you speak. not that I’m expecting you to read it out loud but you know. I’m overthinking.
> 
> originally posted here: [Iron](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/post/162602709770/iron)

snow drifts down from an iron sky, light at first but soon thickening into clumps that look like dirt even against those dark clouds. it looks like ash spewed up from a volcano but there ain’t no volcanoes nearby, or at least there weren’t none on the maps they showed us. nah, it definitely ain’t ash. it’s too cold for that. I blink away the flakes that try to land in my eyes but more settle on my face and I can’t lift my hand to brush them away. can’t find the strength for it.

the clouds brighten, painful bright, bright enough that I have to close my eyes and I feel the sting of cold against my eyelids too.

is this it? is this the light? is this what I’ve been waiting for?

I thought it’d hurt less.

-

I volunteered for this mess. thought it was a way out of a life that didn’t seem to be going nowhere, that needed so many things done just the right way only to keep my head above water, to keep our heads above water. didn’t seem to matter what I did before that, whatever bright ideas I had to make money or start a career. someone’d tell me I’d fail, that I’d fuck up, that I’d end up right where I started.

then I’d prove them right.

I know you hated the idea of me signing up. throwing myself into danger for a cause I couldn’t even pretend I cared about.

and I know you loved it too, me making my own way, making my own decisions, trying to do the right thing for once.

and I know that if you knew where I was right now, flat on my back in mud warmed by my own blood you’d give me such a bollocking I wouldn’t know which way my head was screwed on.

-

maybe I waited too long to open my eyes to the light cos I’m still here in the mud. I dunno if the light works like that, if it gives up if you don’t pay it enough attention, leaves you where you lie. perhaps if I wait here long enough it’ll come back. not that there’s much else I can do. can’t even look down to see the damage; just trying to lift my head feels like new holes are being ripped in my insides.

but if I stay still enough, breathe shallow enough, it don’t hurt that much. if I keep my eyes closed maybe I can pretend I’m lyin’ out on a nice warm beach… 

nah. I’m dying, not stupid.

so I look up at that iron sky. might not be a roof but there are four walls around me, though I can only just see the top of two of them. bombed to shit like the rest of this place. I can hear the wind but not feel it, so maybe it’ll shelter me from the worst of the snow, maybe I can hold on til help comes.

or maybe I just can’t feel anything any more.

-

they knew we was fucked. they knew before they even sent us out. you can’t fight against a cloud of chemicals, can’t fight against an enemy that can straight up disappear, can’t do anything. this ain’t a fight for humans no more, we can’t keep up. we throw our guys against each other and then someone changes the rules. some arse in Whitehall signs a piece of paper and what we’re doing out here is a crime. some dignitary has a quiet word in a back room and our objective already belongs to us, all the blood we’ve already spent is washed away.

enough to make you piss-drunk mad if you ever found out about it. but we don’t, or we’re not supposed to. it’s leaks, and hints, and whispers in ears. someone’ll drop in with a casual  _so have you heard_  and you’ve got no fucking clue whether it’s for real or not. and it don’t do no good. you’ve still got to go out there. still got to do your thing.

orders is orders.

-

I’m not alone. I can hear shots in the distance, popping away over the broken walls of the long-dead town, and I can hear spent shells scattering over the ground, too. that can’t be right, though. maybe it’s an echo. a memory. this shit gets stuck in your head and the simplest thing’ll set it loose. a handful of coins dropped on the floor has half the troop flinching or reaching out for weapons that are safely locked away.

we’ve all got something like that, by now. some of us more than one. like Pete, he’s proper fucked. we’ve had to cover for him a couple of times now when he’s been too fucked-up to make it out of bed in the morning.

I wonder if he made it through this. I hope he didn’t. probably better that way.

-

we all know what we’re waiting for. the rubber-clad hand that comes down on our chest.  _no. done. stop. it’s over._  no point chucking meds into someone who’s just gonna croak anyway. we’re a resource, right? like any other.

and we’ve all seen it by now, that hand that comes down, from the other angle. seen the looks in both sets of eyes. 

felt a hand go cold in our own.

_at least it’s over_ , we say, and we go on. we wait for the fight. we wait for our fates. and we try never to let ourselves think it.

_who’ll be there for me?_

who  _will_ be there for me?

who’s left?

-

the pain is gone but I don’t want it to be. I can’t taste the blood on my lips, can’t feel the pain in my chest, can’t feel a fucking thing. I don’t even want to run away now, I want to fight it, to fight them all but I can’t, I can’t move, can’t do anything.

so… is this it? is this is when I’m supposed to think of home? is this when I’m supposed to think of you, to let my last thoughts be of the one I love the most?

I can’t even do that. I can’t remember your eyes, your face, nothing. I’m trying but they’re gone.

_think, John. think._

there you are, in the kitchen. it’s bright, too bright, the colours hurt my eyes, always did a bit.

cream, gold. sun shining in through the window.

blue, green. those curtains you made yourself, hung them up proud as anything, waited patiently til we all told you how great they were.

purple. red. the flowers. they stank. I complained like hell but you just lifted them to your nose and said again how wonderful they were, and how grateful you were for them. 

_appreciate them while you can_ , you said.  _they’re dying already. like all of us._

I still can’t remember your eyes.

-

there’s a shadow above me. I can’t focus on it but it’s moving around like a ghost hanging over a grave. maybe it is. maybe that’s me. thought it’d be the thinking part of me that got out to do the haunting thing but maybe not. don’t seem fair but none of us know how this really works.

there’s a stinging, stabbing pain in my shoulder and I could almost laugh because I felt it, I  _felt_  it. then the haze lifts, just a little, enough for me to see a syringe in a hand. it ain’t rubber, it ain’t khaki, it ain’t one of ours. it’s got black tape wrapped round the fingers like they couldn’t find any gloves at all.

I’ve heard all the stories about what they do to the ones they capture. lowered voices, furtive looks,  _don’t tell anyone but they found something. a grave._

but they ain’t so kind to the ones who come back, neither.

they lean forward.  _she_  leans forward. her dark hair is run through with grey and speckled with snow. she looks down on me with eyes so dark…

that’s it.

your eyes were brown. brown as the deepest, darkest, bitterest chocolate, brown as the cups of coffee you used to make me drink when you couldn’t afford the real meds. and always warm. always something bright in ‘em, like a light from within, that’s what you had.

she holds something up and it’s so hard to see, so hard to focus. I fight against the haze, fight against the darkness, fight everything until I can’t fight no more.

it came too late. but I know what it was I saw.

it was a red cross.

-

I see you. in the crowd. I sink down onto my knees.

_I’m okay,_  you say.  _I’m okay._

but I’m not.

I’m sorry, mum.

I’m sorry.


End file.
